He paused and looked at Noah with eyes that held centuries of gratitude for a being who had shown him kindness when he deserved none.
"I told THE Creature to spread my Weavings out across Existence so that I could hide in fragnts until the ti was right," Anaximander continued. "I set up new Guidelines to make it possible, declaring that my existence could be divided and scattered without diminishing my core self. When a ti in the future ca when things settled down, a friend could co and wake . I thought that friend would be THE Creature returning after his victory, but it turned out to be you."
He smiled with genuine warmth.
"So here we are, Friend."
...!
Here they were.
Noah silently thought about everything he had just learned before he looked at Anaximander closely and asked the question that had been burning in his mind since he first encountered this impossible being.
"What is your Way?"
...!
His Way.
Anaximander smiled at this question as he looked up to the endlessly obsidian ceiling above them, his expression one of peaceful contemplation as he considered how to explain sothing that defied conventional explanation.
"My Way is My Way," he began with that familiar tone of a scientist trying to describe sothing beyond normal paraters. "My Way is The Way.THE Creature called it The Way of THE Way when we discussed it during our conversations. I called it just... My Way. The Way of Self."
He looked back at Noah with eyes that held the weight of profound understanding.
"You can call it another na if you wish, but it is simply a relationship between and Existence," Anaximander continued. "I tell Existence how things should be, and Existence simply needs to listen. That is the Way. That is my Way. I do not fight against reality or bend it through force or authority. I simply inform reality of how things are for , and reality accepts my declaration as truth."
...!
BOOM!
The Way of THE Way.
The Way of Self.
A power that allowed its wielder to redefine their relationship with Existence itself, to make declarations that reality was obligated to accept, to exist outside the normal paraters that bound even THE entities.
Noah looked at Anaximander with new understanding as the pieces fell into place. This was why THE Living Paradox wanted him destroyed so badly. This was why THE Creature moved to protect him despite the betrayal. This was why such a being had been hidden in fragnts across Existence rather than allowed to remain whole.
Anaximander’s Way was a threat to the very order that THE Living Paradox sought to impose through THE Loom and The Fallout.
Because how could you destroy soone who simply declared that they could not be destroyed?
How could you impose your will on soone who had already declared that external wills did not apply to them?
How could you win against soone who had decided that they had already won?
It was an absurd Way, and even with it, that bum, Paradox, had still won against it and Existence itself in their first clash.
"..."
Noah frowned as he thought about all of it!
As Noah thought about many things, Anaximander in front of him smiled as this being began to rise up on unsteady legs that grew stronger with each passing mont.
"I am an explorer," Anaximander said with that familiar tone of soone who had spent their entire existence chasing understanding. "I am a scientist. I questioned and I wondered, but in my quest for knowledge, I brought a lot of things onto my plate as at this mont I have to try and set things straight. My power is returning ever so slowly and it is not to the point that I can do what I used to do before, but... will you help , friend?"
Noah looked up at this being as his eyes shone sharply with curiosity and calculation.
"What exactly do you need help with?"
Anaximander smiled and stretched his hands as if testing the limits of his recovering existence.
"THE Early Veiled Shore of THE Creature," he said with weight behind every word. "I have to get back into it, and I need help in this as I do not know how much ti we have. My actions brought about the result of many things, and Existence does not need to suffer because of . Countless lifeforms do not need to suffer because of . Please, help right this wrong."
BOOM!
THE Early Veiled Shore of THE Creature?
Noah’s eyes shone luminously at such words as he got up from his seated position.
The First Farr had ntioned a while ago that he heard a voice telling him to find THE Early Veiled Shore of THE Creature as a thod to surviving The Fallout. At the ti, Noah had filed that information away as sothing to investigate when the opportunity arose.
Noah did not particularly need this given his own preparations and the fortress he was building with THE Infiniverse, but he was definitely interested in what secrets THE Creature’s personal Shore might hold.
So he looked toward the figure of Anaximander, this ridiculous oddity who defied the very laws of Existence through sheer declaration, and he said with a slight smile, "Just show The Way."
...!
---
Within THE Loom.
In a sea of vibrant paradox where contradictions blood like flowers in an impossible garden, a single entity was surrounded by paradoxical flas of Existence that burned without consuming and illuminated without revealing.
It was truly lonely at the top.
Very few could understand how those considered at the top felt because they had never climbed that high themselves. They had never made the sacrifices, the choices, and done everything that was required to reach such heights. They looked up at those who stood above them and saw only power and glory, never the cost that had been paid to acquire such things.
The struggles to get there were invisible to those who only saw the destination.
The sacrifices were forgotten by those who only celebrated the victories.
The choices, so of which haunted even the most powerful beings across eons, were unknown to those who had never been forced to make them.
Nobody understood what THE Living Paradox had to do to get where he was now, to even be capable of laying claim to The Oldest Paradox of Existence and stand as one of the few entities that could challenge the very foundations of reality itself.
But more often than not, beings like him who were at the top did not need others to understand because their drive and ambition was so unfathomably potent that they were a force to be reckoned with regardless of comprehension or sympathy.
Very few in Existence knew, but THE Living Paradox was actually born a peasant.
An entity of low class who held nothing and had nothing, who scraped by in the earliest monts of his existence without power or authority or even the promise of either. But look at him now, surrounded by flas that embodied the very concept of contradiction, standing at the precipice of an act that would reshape all of Observable Existence.
The flaming figure of Paradox smiled briefly as mories of that humble beginning flickered through his ancient consciousness.
"I was born a peasant," he said with a voice that held both pride and a strange sort of acceptance. "I will die a peasant. But in between... in between all of this, there will be imnsity. There will be glory."
HUUM!
As he said this, he raised his hand and pointed above where the taphorical clock representing Midnight hung in the paradoxical sky of his domain.
The massive hand moved from one second toward zero.
The ti to Midnight was zero.
This was because he had sensed another one of his precautions being set off. He didn’t know which one of the myriad of things that he was careful of had been triggered, but he innately knew that sothing had tripped one of his countless safeguards scattered across Observable Existence. And it simply tipped the scales ever closer toward Midnight until there was nowhere left to tip.
As of this mont, there was no ti between now and The Fallout.
What remained was preparations and activation.
At this mont, THE Living Paradox actually raised his hand and saw his fingers trembling. His hand itself was actually trembling with minute vibrations that would have been invisible to anyone who wasn’t looking for them.
Was it out of anticipation or a sense of fear for what was to co?
His smile beca brighter as his hand slowly stopped trembling, and it was a glorious sign of anticipation rather than dread. He was one of the few that knew how nothing would be the sa after The Fallout transford the landscape of Observable Existence.
The conditions that would allow for ascension to the higher Scales of Existence would bloom.
THE Creature and many others would be set free from their various prisons and suppressions.
A free-for-all would unfold, but at a scale The Infinite Unfurling had never imagined and could never have prepared for.
The cards were set and nothing could be changed at this mont as Midnight approached. With the clock to Midnight hitting zero, The Fallout would unfold anywhere within the next few minutes or hours.
THE Living Paradox moved away from the sea of Paradox and appeared elsewhere within THE Loom, and before him a massive object burning with incandescent multicolored flas of Existence spun in the void. It looked like a cube, but it radiated such heat and majesty that even a Fundantal Depth of Absolute Sovereignty entity might be burned by its re proximity.
THE Living Paradox appeared before it and stroked it with a nostalgic expression, his flaming hand passing over its surface with sothing approaching tenderness.
"Alright buddy, let’s do this," he said with a voice that held eons of preparation and anticipation. "Us against Existence. Let us change the landscape of Observable Existence. Let us have a sense of fairness out there where the strong have ruled unchallenged for far too long."
His voice grew harder, more resolute.
"Chaos? Existence? The First Tongue? Paradox? Fuck them. Fuck them all. Every aspect of The Oldest Paradox of Existence thinks they deserve to win, thinks they deserve to rule, thinks they deserve to define what reality is and what it should be."
...!
As he finished saying these words, his eyes burned with a sense of imnsity and veiled rage that had been building since the mont he first realized that Existence was unfair and that he had been born with nothing while others had been born with everything.
And then he moved forward, his hand reaching toward the burning cube that would initiate The Fallout and change Observable Existence forever.
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